by John Ringo
What was left looked something like a smoking metal wishbone. Until the missiles hit.
—|—
"Shift fire," Kinyon said. "Full power shots to each battlewagon. Status of their capital missiles?"
"Entering Athena's basket," the defensive tech said as the battlestation shuddered again. "Paris got some launches with the BDA clusters but they've gone dark."
"Up to Athena," Kinyon said. "God help Earth."
—|—
Ninety-three missiles, all pushing seventy-ton kinetic energy weapons, made it through their boost phase alive and unharmed and went dark, headed for Terra to enact doom on this new species that thought it could defy their Rangora makers.
They were "brilliant" missiles, the best the Rangora could make. Even as they boosted they sent out spurious gravitic messages, radar and lidar jamming, and they were solid black with small lights on them that mimicked the stellar background. Any way you looked for them they were tough to find.
It was the understanding of the human commands that Athena was the defender of the solar system. The goddess Athena was the patron goddess of Athens, the goddess of intellect and wisdom and, notably, the goddess of victory. For all those reasons, the name was chosen for the U.S. SpacCom AI.
She also handled space traffic control.
The truth was, in situations like this, Athena left most of the grunt work to her buddy: Argus.
Argus wasn't part of the U.S. or nascent terrestrial government. Technically, it was the SAPL control AI and "owned" by Apollo Mining. But some of those missiles were bound to be looking for the system defense AIs. When it came to things like survival, AIs tended to cut some corners. And whereas Athena had been optimized for defense and space management, Argus had been optimized for searching.
Argus, in mythology, was a giant with a hundred eyes. Also called Panoptes: The All-Seeing. One of the tiny little codicils built into SAPL early on was that every secondary mirror, the thousands of BDAs, VSAs, VDAs and Ungs, had a small but very high resolution camera.
Resolution in optics increases with the square of the mirror area. A ten-meter mirror is not ten times as good as a one-meter mirror, it is seventy-eight times as good.
The whole SAPL was, in effect, a now six-hundred-square-kilometer telescope. It couldn't just spot pretty girls on a beach in Sao Paulo. It could pick out the tiny individual hairs on their stomachs.
Many of the mirrors still had to be used for moving power. The rest became the thousand eyes of Argus, Panoptes the All-Seeing.
Managing those thousands of mirrors—which required very precise targeting and orbits—Argus often had to deal with the effect of gravity on his carefully programmed plans. When you're bouncing a ten centimeter beam of power from the orbit of Venus to the asteroid belt, trying to hit a mirror that is only ten meters wide, you have to be somewhat... detail oriented.
There were thousands of minor gravitational effects in the system. These included asteroids if the object was passing close enough—and Argus was very picky on what it considered "close enough"—to the gravitational effects of shipping, which was starting to seriously annoy it, to the, by its count, one hundred forty-nine planetary scale objects, which it defined as being of a high enough gravitational constant to form a sphere. Argus included seventeen in the Kuiper Belt that human astronomers had not yet detected because, in Argus' opinion, they were lacking in ambition.
When Argus first went online, human astronomers were still unsure if they had categorized all near-Earth minor planetary objects over one meter.
Argus could have told them the answer after a week. No. But he was done by then and in general Argus didn't chit-chat.
In addition to the SAPL array, Argus had two other systems to use to find the missiles. One was the various human planetary telescopes, all of which, in an emergency, Athena could and would commandeer. The humans had radar telescopes, X-ray telescopes, radio telescopes and, for all Argus cared, fart detector telescopes. The lack of ambition in human astronomers was most evident, in Argus' opinion, in the quality of their telescopes. He took the data and processed it but it wasn't exactly his main focus. Even the large orbital space radar system that SpacCom was pouring over. Puh-lease.
The next was the Gravitational Anomaly Detector array. The U.S. government had scattered thirty-six gravitational detectors in orbit between the gate and Earth specifically to keep an eye out for an attack like this. They were pretty good, for human systems, and they gave good take on gravitic anomalies. If you could sort out all the clutter.
Argus was good at sorting out clutter. If you dropped a handful of poppy seeds mixed with mustard in front of Argus, he'd have it sorted before it hit the ground.
When searching for the ninety-three missiles, Argus first considered what it thought it knew. That is, it had gotten information from Paris, Athena and the scattered GAD circuit about the initial boost phase. Some of that information was, Argus knew, spurious. But no matter how much the missile systems futz with the data, once they stopped boosting they were on preprogrammed orbits headed for Earth. They were somewhere inside of a bucket of space. A large bucket of space, but finite.
Then it considered data points that weren't quite so obvious. Also in that large bucket of space were other objects. NEOs, ships, mirrors. Because Argus was... detail oriented, it always was having to keep in mind the corrections for things like shuttle gravity drives working between Earth and Troy affecting mirrors in Venusian orbit, four light-seconds out of the plane of the ecliptic. That might mean only a thousandth micrometer of variation in the position of the mirror, but that mattered when you were shooting around beams of power. The beam might fall outside of Argus' standard of .0001 percent accuracy of targeting. It might sound crazy but if you let the little things get away, before you knew it some beam was cutting a planet in half and people were asking questions...
And Argus didn't care for chit-chat.
When objects move very fast, their mass increases due to what humans would call Einsteinian physics. As an object approaches the speed of light its mass approaches infinity. See E=MC2 which was not quite accurate but a good summation of the principal.
All objects have some gravitational effect. Newton proved that with a couple of lead balls and poorly made springs. As mass increases, gravity increases.
The missiles were not approaching anything like the speed of light, but they were starting to get into the region where someone or something sufficiently detail oriented would notice a slight gravitational increase in their local region.
A sixteen-ton BDA mirror suddenly experienced a three micrometer per second square delta-V off of its programmed trajectory. This is about the force that a bee uses to flex its knee.
Another BDA shifted slightly in space, received an allocated amount of power.
Zap. Missile down.
Argus was... somewhat detail oriented. You have to be to process the view from a million eyes.
But sometimes even a million eyes are not enough.
—|—
"Status," the President said, holding onto the grab bar.
During the Global War on Terror, the Vice President was almost always "at an undisclosed location." The point being that if the President was taken out, there would be constitutional continuity. The VP would step in and things would continue without a major political crisis on top of whatever had killed the President.
First the Horvath bombardments had convinced the government that it needed to disperse. Congress no longer met in one building with a big, easily targeted dome. The VP went to an undisclosed location.
Then the President went to an undisclosed location. Not, as had been repeatedly pointed out, because he was afraid of being killed. But because he was afraid of the city around him being killed.
The President was currently in a military Blackhawk helicopter moving at a very high rate of speed away from an undisclosed location called Peoria, Kansas. Because the Pentagon knew something about the Rangora missiles.
They weren't just smart. They weren't just brilliant. They were scary.
The missiles were not programmed for particular points of interest. The Rangora didn't know which might get through Terra's defenses, so what was the point of telling them "gut this city?"
They were each given a list of targets. As they approached, onboard not-quite-AIs studied the known data coming from Earth.
Say the first target was Rio, one of the largest remaining cities on Earth. And say that as Missile X is headed inbound it picks up from the terrestrial Internet a couple of hundred bloggers near Rio saying that there was a mushroom cloud. It would go to the next in its target list.
Part of the target list, furthermore, was not cities but leadership. The Rangora Imperium was big on leadership. When the Rangora got a bit questionable about who exactly were the big guys they had a little civil war to settle things out.
SpaceCom wasn't quite sure that the President was at the top of the list of potential targets but he had to be damned close. As was SpacCom headquarters, which was situated seventy-three miles outside of Omaha, Nebraska.
"Athena has destroyed sixty-eight missiles," the colonel from SpacCom said, hovering over his laptop. "Twenty-five left."
"I can do basic math," the President said. "Get us away from populated areas!"
"Working on it, Mr. President," the Army helo pilot said. The Marines were usually in charge of the President's military style security. But the Army had Blackhawks, which were much more deployable, not to mention faster and with longer range, than the CH-46s the Marines still used as helos.
The alternative was a Myrmidon, which was a great big gravitic target.
"Sir, we should go to EMCON," the colonel said, closing his laptop. "Your cell?"
"Here," the President said, handing it over. The First Family was on four more helicopters, scattered and heading southwest away from his position. "Well, there's one nice thing about the way that the Rangora make war."
"Sir?" the colonel said.
"Peaceniks used to say that if the leaders were forced to fight, there wouldn't be any wars," the President said. "Bang goes that theory."
—|—
The Blackhawk was low and hammering it, nose down and dodging wires to stay below any radar.
Which just meant it was in the perfect position to be picked up by a cell phone.
—|—
"Oh My God! Jerri! It is! I could see him in the window! I'm sending you the vid..."
—|—
SpaceCom had one thing right, the President was somewhere in the top of the list of targets.
What they had wrong was how close to the top. He was, in fact, the very top. With great big asterisks. The one part that Star Marshall Gi'Bucosof carried over from To'Jopeviq's report was the leadership structure of Terra and the various tribes' war policy makers.
Sixteen missiles, already having crept inside the orbit of the moon, suddenly lit off their drives and hammered for Earth at 1000 gravities of acceleration.
There were, now, sixty-nine BDA clusters in orbit around Earth. By spherical geometry, any twenty-four of them could see a quadrant of Earth at any time. There were, in addition, two hundred more scattered in various tidally stable positions.
A total of thirty-eight BDA clusters could target the missiles, more than two each.
The problem being, the missiles weren't just going straight. Nor were they easy to detect. Shut down, with some time, they were easy to engage.
Full power and roaring? Ninety-three out of one hundred and forty-eight had made it through the gate defenses. These were missiles that were very very hard to kill. Gravitic, electronic and visual ghosts played out to either side as the missiles snaked in for the kill...
—|—
The President was in the gunner seat of the Blackhawk. Not the safest spot but it was the best view. If it was going to happen, he wanted to watch. So he saw the streak in the sky...
"God's grace be w—"
—|—
"What's the word from Earth?" Admiral Kinyon asked, gazing at the picture from the gate area.
"Twenty hits," Commodore Pounders replied. "We lost the President, the Vice President, speaker, Senate president pro tem, the British prime minister, the Russian prime minister and the Chinese premier. The premier was in Shenzhen so we don't know which was the target. The President, the Vice and the Brit prime minister all managed to get to relatively unpopulated areas before the strikes. They were definite decap strikes. The Russian PM was in Novy Birks. Toss-up again. Shenzhen, Gungzou, Calcutta, Bogota... Long list."
"U.S. strikes?" the admiral asked.
"Relatively few of the remaining cities got hit," the commodore said. "Only four of sixteen got through the BDA net. The missiles were going for the leadership, which was dispersed. If there hadn't been so many targeting on the President and the PM, we probably would have gotten them all. Strike in Louisville. That might have been, well, Louisville or because the Senate president pro tem was there."
"Power transfer?"
"Smooth," Pounders replied. "The Chief Justice is being flown to Ellington, Missouri. The secretary of states plane is grounded there. She's already up on TV."
"They're trying to destroy us piecemeal," the admiral said.
"Well, sir," Commodore Pounders said, looking out at the scattered wreckage. "I don't think we're so much trying as succeeding."
—|—
"...clear..."
"I'm getting a hypercom trans," Dana said.
"Yeah," Hartwell said, breathing deeply. "Coming up on hypercom power..."
"...all clear," Paris commed. "Repeat. Battle over. Rangora eliminated. All ships in area, all clear. Shuttle Four-Three-Eight, all clear. One-Forty-Second, all clear..."
Hartwell came up on full power and brought up the screens.
"Dammit!" Dana said. "Dammit to hell!"
"At least we stopped them," Hartwell said, quietly. "Mostly."
"Not that!" the coxswain said. "We just got this place cleaned up!"
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
"Thermal, Rammer," Corporal Ramage commed. Getting the staff sergeant to assign him to Thirty-Six, again, had been a bit tough. But at least there was a Thirty-Six. "We are sealed and green."
"Roger, Rammer," Thermal commed. "Welcome aboard. We're awaiting the rest of your guys loading."
"Roger, EM," Ramage replied.
There was a pause.
"Don't suppose you'd like to talk to the coxswain?"
Ramage gritted his teeth for a moment.
"Yes, EM, that would be a positive item."
"Glad you're okay, Rammer," Dana commed.
"I was sitting in Troy," Ramage replied, trying not to sigh in relief. He hadn't had any duty reason to contact the coxswain and all nonduty communications were shut down while they were still at Condition One. He looked over at LCP Lasswell and raised a finger as if to count one. As in "You say one God damned word!"
Lassie, for once, actually looked serious and just shook his head in his helmet as if to say "Dude, not going to joke you on this one." They had two more Marines with them, Father and Chaosman. They were just looking confused.
"How'd it go?" Ramage continued.
"Played dead," Dana commed. "Looked like one more piece of scrap. And we just got this place sort of cleaned up!"
"Bad out there?"
"These guys are... were pretty big," Dana commed. "And they blew the hell over everywhere!"
"It's okay, D— Coxswain," Ramage said, trying not to chuckle. He had the usual Marine approach to neatness which was not OCD because it was training. Dana, on the other hand, was OCD. "We'll get it cleaned up again."
"What's this we stuff, jarhe— Gotta go. We're undocking."
"Roger," Ramage said.
"What was that all about?" PFC John "Father" Patricelli asked. He was a bit old to be a PFC, mostly because it was his fourth hitch. He'd mentioned that "Patri" was Latin for father and the name had stuck.
Ram
age didn't answer and he looked at Lassie as if to say "One damned word."
"The corporal and the coxswain are..." Lasswell said, then stopped as if trying to find the right word.
"Involved?" Father said.
"That's the word," Lassie said gratefully.
"Ah."
"You're screwing the cox?" Private John "Chaosman" Peterson asked.
"Lock it down, Private," Ramage snarled.
"Uh, gung-ho, Corporal," Peterson said.
"Chaosman, he's holding a laser," Father said. "And I heard where during the battle the shuttles were out in the scrapyard. Which meant his significant other was under fire while we were eating popcorn."
"Oh," Peterson said. "That had to suck."
"Which was why he told you to lock it down," Patricelli said. "So I'd suggest that you lock it down before there's an accident. Another accident."
Chaosman's nick came from the fact that stuff just happened around him. And not in a good way. He was some sort of magnet for screw-ups. Which in EVA was not a good thing.
The first time he did his EVA qual, a brand-new, thoroughly-tested navopak just up and quit. Full system failure, which was pretty hard with triple redundancy. And it wouldn't come back up. There had been a massive short-circuit that essentially destroyed the pak. It was barely good for cannibalized parts.
Laser weapons were his particular bugaboo. Usually they just failed to fire at all. Worse, the safety occasionally just up and quit. He could not use a computer to save his life. His implants had had to be replaced. Twice. To top it all off, he had all the sense God gave a baby duck. Nobody was quite sure they wanted him around in space.
"Listen up, Marines," Gunny Brimage commed. "The usual. Pick up the escape pods, line 'em up, move to the drop-off point when you're full. Difference this time being that they're Rangora. Which is why there's four of you. Rangora tend to be somewhat feistier than Horvath. Any of them get squirrelly, you are authorized to fire without warning. That is not permission to massacre your load. For general information, yes, we got hammered again. They threw a load of missiles at Earth. Most of them were intercepted. They were programmed for decapitation strikes. The President and the VP are dead."